


The Promised Dance

by Aki (Akiko_Natsuko)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Choices, Dancing, Doubt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Love, Multi, Post-Endgame, Promises, Realization, Time Travel, Understanding, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 16:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18782323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akiko_Natsuko/pseuds/Aki
Summary: He’d lost them both, just as he’d lost his chance at a life with Peggy. But he’d fought for them, to bring them back, and they were alive now. Waiting for him, ready to stand at his side if he asked them to, and he almost laughed then, realising that her words meant as encouragement, were far more accurate than either of them had realised. It might not be the happiness he had dreamt of for so long, the dream kept locked in a locket and a promise that had now been fulfilled, but it was happiness.





	The Promised Dance

 

    It had seemed simple enough in his head. No, that was a lie. It had never been simple, his heart and mind vacillating between certainty and doubt even as he’d stepped onto the device, and he’d missed his shield, the weight of Mjolnir in his hand not as grounding. He wasn’t sure how he’d kept his voice even, or his thoughts from flickering across his face as he spoke with the others. Knowing that his gaze had lingered a little too long on Bucky – who knew or at least suspected what he was planning if his words were anything to go by, on Sam who was still willing to follow him into danger even after everything that had happened and on the lake behind them.

_Can I really leave this all behind?_

There was no answer, not even in his own heart. Even though that very morning he had woken up feeling as though he had reached some kind of decision, and his heart ached, doubt and longing warring for control as he and Bucky traded words from a different life, and as the device flickered to life, Tony’s legacy whipping him back into the past once more.

_I don’t know what to do._

*

   He returned the stones one by one, and each trip, each glimpse of the past – of a different timeline now, he supposed, only added to the uncertainty in his heart. The ache of what had been lost, and what had been sacrificed. The feeling of being out of place in the very universe that he’d fought so hard to save.

    He lingered longest on Vormir, ignoring the spectre from his past as it hovered nearby and ignoring its words about the cost of the stone. About what he was giving up by returning it. He already knew the weight of both, had seen it echoed in Clint’s eyes when he had slowly, reverently laid the yellow stone into the case.

“Nat…” He didn’t have the words. It seemed like a lifetime ago since he’d had the right words, even though he could vaguely remember finding the right ones just before the battle, or even during it, but at some point, they had disappeared. Maybe when Tony had fallen. Slipping away without a word, and with Steve unable to bring himself to close the distance to his side, to say all the words that they’d never really had the chance to say. Or maybe, in the time that had followed, as he’d realised that the fight was over. That they’d saved the universe. That he had Bucky and Sam back at his side.

That he didn’t know what to do next.

_I only pretend like I know everything, Rogers…_

   The words from so long ago echoed in his mind, and for half a second, he imagined that he saw a flicker of black in the corner of his eye that had nothing to do with the Red Hood watching him through burning eyes. A smile that held more sorrow than joy tugged at his lips, and he nodded, even as he stretched a hand that trembled more than he cared to admit before he tossed the stone into the abyss once more, finally finding his voice as the golden glow passed out of sight.

“Thank you.”

****

He returned the space stone last.

    A weight lifting from his shoulders when it was back where it belonged. Although it was promptly replaced by another one as he spied Howard Stark leaving the building. A leaden weight settling in the pit of his stomach, as he remembered what Tony had said about their meeting The other man hadn’t gone into detail, the tension might have eased between them, but it had eroded the comfortable relationship they’d once had, but Steve had been able to see how much it had meant to him. It hurt to realise that Howard was going home to the birth of his son and that he would never get to see what Tony would become. That he would never know what his son would do for the world, for the universe, and he had to bite his lip, fighting the temptation to go after him, to tell him to stop chasing the past, and the future, and to live for what he had. What he would have.

     Instead, he turned away, steps heavy as he retraced the path towards Peggy’s office as his decision loomed over him. _What do I do?_ If he followed the half-formed idea, the dream that had propelled him to step forward and volunteer to return the stones, then he was in the wrong time. In this place, and this time, he was already too late. She had moved on, found her own path, her own life. _I have lived a life…my only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours,_ her words echoed, and he faltered, steps heavy. She had found a life to live, she had been happy and loved. Could he take that from her? Even if he went back and left this version of her to continue with the life she had carved out for herself, he would still be robbing some family of the wonderful wife and mother.

    Perhaps that was why his feet betrayed him, carrying him not to the room he had been heading for, the room where not long ago he had peered through the blinds and seen her, so close and yet so far. But instead, to the other door, his hand rising of its own accord as he knocked, the sound lost beneath the roaring noise now flooding his ears.

“Come in.” Even the deafening hammering of his heartbeat wasn’t enough to block out the sound of her voice, and for a moment the world seemed to stop, just as it had when he’d first set eyes on Bucky when they’d been fighting. Or when he’d turned on the battlefield, just in time to see Tony stumble backwards and fall, triumphant and broken…or all those years ago when she had pressed her lips to his, as time slipped between their fingers. It was a siren song he couldn’t ignore and taking a deep breath, the uncertainties simmering away beneath the surface he reached for the handle and stepped inside. “Have you brought me the paperwork I…” Peggy had been bent over a file, but now she trailed off as she looked up and met his gaze, and not knowing what else to do he offered her a sheepish smile.

“I believe I’m a little late…”

    There was a pause, heavy with a thousand unspoken things, which was finally broken by the sound her pen hitting the desk even as she scraped her chair back across the floor. “Steve…?” His heart twisted at the emotion in her voice, and for a second his fingers drifted to the device on his wrist – he could do it, he could go back, change their fate.

He could…

“Look at you…” Her voice grounded him, just as it had that day in the lab when he had become more than Steven Rogers from Brooklyn, and his hand fell away, just as she closed the distance between them. The embrace when it came, was everything he’d imagined and more, and yet the itch, the feeling of not belonging persisted even as he wrapped his arms around her in return. Almost desperate he closed his eyes, trying to lose himself in her hold, in the fact that she was here, that she was seeing him. It didn’t work, because as soon as he closed his eyes, all he could see was everything that he had lost and gained over the last few days, and he wasn’t even aware that his hands had fallen away until she pulled away too.

“You’re not my Steve, are you?” His eyes flew open at the question, hearing the sorrow and understanding in her voice, and when he looked, she had backed up a few steps and was studying him with the same intensity she had when he was nothing but a scrawny, unblooded soldier.

“I…” The lie was there, but he couldn’t put it into words and not just because of the way she was looking at him, lips quirked up in a half-smile and a far too knowing look in his eyes. It didn’t help that he could half hear Tony’s voice in the back of his mind, teasing him for being the world’s worst liar. That had been a lifetime ago, before everything had gone wrong, and yet they had nearly been back at that point, trust blossoming between them…too late. He closed his eyes, only to open them ago when he heard her moving closer. “How?” He asked instead, abandoning the lie, and trying to ignore the chuckle that seemed to echo through his memory. _You’re a good man, but a terrible liar Cap. That’s why it’s a good thing you have me on your side…_

“Your eyes,” Peggy smiled, dragging him out of his thoughts as she took another step closer and curling her fingers against his cheek as she held his gaze. “They always showed too much, and there are shadows there that weren’t there before. Shadows that take a lifetime to form.”

_A lifetime._

    It was a painful echo of the words her older self had said to him once upon a time, and he bowed his head for a moment, before looking at her again. Really letting himself see herself this time. She was different he realised, in ways that he hadn’t or had refused to notice the last time he had glimpsed her through the window. The war was written across her face, even though it was years ago, lines of grief hidden amongst laughter lines, and the fire that had drawn him to her like a moth to the flame when they first met, had hardened, honed to a weapon that had allowed her to forge her own path. To keep going. To find a life of her own, and in that instant, he knew that he could never take that from her.

_This isn’t where I belong._

   It hurt to realise that, to admit it even in the safety of his own mind and not sure what else to do he laughed, a broken, brittle sound that sounded far too loud in the silence that had fallen over them. Her fingers curled tighter against his cheek in response, and for half a second he thought that she was going to embrace him again. Instead, she shook her head. “I don’t know how you’re here, or if you even really are,” her fingers tightened again at her own words. “But I am here, with you…” She pressed her other hand against his chest, and he felt the tremor that wracked her as she felt the beat of his heart and the warmth of his body, and then she smiled. A ghost of the smile she had worn the last time he had seen her, back when they’d made their promise and before the ice and time had claimed him, as she looked him. “And you owe me a dance.”

    There was no music. No laughter and drinking in the background. She was dressed for work, and he was wearing a suit built to withstand the forces of travelling through the quantum dimension, and they were practically strangers in this time. A woman who had moved forward, and a man who had clung to the past for far too long.

It didn’t stop them.

     And it was like two pieces of a whole coming together, as he laughed, a little less brittle than before, as he moved, arms slipping down to take her into the hold he had dreamt of for so many years. Her own arms sliding into position as though they’d been born to do this, and there in her office in the depths of Shield, he was finally able to keep his promise. It was nothing like what he’d imagined or dreamed over the years, and yet as they swayed back and forth to a rhythm all of their own, something eased in his chest, the weight of a broken promise begin to lessen. It didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t his Peggy, or that he didn’t belong here. It didn’t alter the fact that he wasn’t sure what he was meant to do now, or where he was meant to belong, but for a moment at least, it felt as though he had come home. “Peggy…” Her name was a whisper of a prayer on his lips as he let his head fall against hers, holding her closer, and allowing himself to pretend for a moment longer at least that this was all there was.

“I’m not sure that I can keep fighting.” He hadn’t meant to speak, to break the comfortable silence that had encompassed them, trapping them in the illusion that this was all there was. He wasn’t even sure where the words had come from, and yet the moment he’d said them, he knew that they were true. “Not anymore…”

    He had spent so much of his life fighting, confronting a world much bigger than himself all in the pursuit of being ‘a good man’. He had continued to fight even when he’d lost all hope because he hadn’t known what else to do, or how else to fix what had been broken. _Some people move on, but not us…_ He’d said it, but it was only now as he looked back on everything, that he realised he’d been fighting, searching for an answer because he didn’t know how to stop. Now though… now he didn’t know how to keep going, to keep fighting. They had fought, and they had won but look at what it had cost them. Natasha. Tony. A world that would forever be scarred by the memories of those five years, a wound that festered even now in his chest.

“Then don’t,” Peggy murmured, resting her head against his chest. “Whatever has happened, whatever has put those shadows in your eyes, it’s over now, isn’t it?” It wasn’t really a question. She knew, just as she had known that he wasn’t the Steve she knew, and he shook his head, amazed and bemused that even after all this time she knew him so well. He wished that he could accept her words, or that he could believe that it was over, but…

“It’s not that simple…”

“It isn’t just up to you to fight the evils of this world,” Peggy cut across the weak protest, pulling back and tilting her head towards the piles of files on her desk, and he couldn’t help but follow her gaze, something twisting in his chest at the sheer number of them. How many threats had he slept through? How many of those dangers had she faced without him? “One thing this job has taught me is that there is something else or someone else to fight. And that there are always people that will step up to fight.”

“But…”

“You’ve done more than enough,” she cut him off again, leaning up to kiss his cheek, before stepping back as they drifted to a halt. “If you don’t have a reason to fight anymore, then maybe it is time for you to find a different path because you don’t have to be a soldier to be a good man.” They were words he’d thought before, questions he’d asked himself over the long five years as he’d tried to keep going. _Why are you still fighting? When will you stop?_ Peggy was giving him the answers he had been seeking, and yet even now, he found himself hesitating, fingers twitching as though they missed the weight of Mjolnir returned to its own time on Asgard or his shield shattered by Thanos. It felt wrong to walk away from the battlefield, even though there was nothing left to fight at the moment, to walk away when they hadn’t, and yet… 

“I wish it was that simple.”

“Things are never simple,” Peggy murmured. “Look at the two of us.” There was a shimmer in her eyes now, her mask slipping for a moment and her smile looked more like a grimace. “Going back might be hard, finding a new path will be harder still, believe me, I know.”  Grief. He hadn’t seen it before, but he saw it now. Pain, and longing that echoed his own, and it gave him the courage to voice the words that had haunted him from the moment he’d agreed to return the stones.

“I’m not sure I want to go back.” _I could stay…_

“You can’t stay,” Peggy murmured, and again there was that understanding in her eyes, as though she could see beneath the surface. As though she knew the thoughts and the idea that had driven him here in the first place and he had to look away, staring at the ground, as guilt and longing warred for control. “Steve,” her fingers brushed his chin, tilting it upwards. He could have fought her, but he didn’t, instead reluctantly meeting her gaze, not sure what to make of the expression on her face this time. “This won’t be your only chance at happiness.” It was sadness he realised, and hope, for him…for both of them, and he closed his eyes.

_On your left…_

_You’re taking all the stupid with you…_

_Bucky…_

_Sam…_

    He’d lost them both, just as he’d lost his chance at a life with Peggy. But he’d fought for them, to bring them back, and they were alive now. Waiting for him, ready to stand at his side if he asked them to, and he almost laughed then, realising that her words meant as encouragement, were far more accurate than either of them had realised. It might not be the happiness he had dreamt of for so long, the dream kept locked in a locket and a promise that had now been fulfilled, but it was happiness. And he took a deep breath before he lifted his head high, opening his eyes to meet her gaze once more and smiling as he nodded.

“I know…”

 

 


End file.
